Capacitors are often used in integrated circuits for their role in constructing devices that capture, process, and store electrical signals. Metal-oxide-metal (MOM) capacitors are an example of a capacitor structure that is commonly used in integrated circuit designs. The capacitance, or charge storing ability, of MOM capacitors is typically determined by the side-wall capacitance of metal fingers laterally disposed on a plane in a layer of an integrated circuit. This structure of MOM capacitors adds flexibility to the design of integrated circuits, such as by facilitating routing between capacitor plates and the stacking of capacitors in two or more layers of an integrated circuit.
A task of integrated circuit designers is to continually reduce the size of these circuits, such as by shrinking the size of their constituent components, or by more densely packing these components together. The integrated circuit area used by a MOM capacitor can be reduced by decreasing the width of the fingers of these devices or by reducing the spacing between such fingers. The ability to reduce the width of, or the spacing between, fingers of an MOM capacitor can be limited by vias disposed in these structures, such as for coupling electrodes or plates of a MOM capacitor to other circuit components. Such vias, for example, may impose limit the minimum distance between a wall of a finger and an edge of a via. Violating such limits may cause a circuit design to fail design rules meant to ensure the quality of a process used to fabricate integrated from such circuit designs.